si jugamos, ganaria

I woke up, drug myself out of bed and went three blocks down the street to school for the second day of orientation. It was kind of frustrating and very unorganized. I waited over and hour with the rest of the gringos to talk to Isabel about our classes but never got the chance. Then we went to a presentation to learn about the schools network and how students log in to check classes and grades and stuff, but the presentation moved very fast and it was presented by a college student and I'm not very good at understanding my peers yet so I just got the basic ideas.

Afterwords we went back to Isabel's office to try again, and about an hour later I was registered for my classes. I may do a couple last minute switches because I have to get some things cleared up by SJU. But as of now I have class Tuesday morning, Wed afternoon, and Thur afternoon. Four day weekends will be really nice! Isabel even admitted to being really unorganized and inefficient. She said a terremotito (little earthquake) must have disrupted all the schools organization!

Finally it was 2o'clock and time for all the sports. They had about 12 ping pong tables set up, a bunch of chess sets, a type of soccer/volleyball game, and half court basketball. Esteban set me up with a random teammate the day before so I introduced myself and we talked a little bit. His name was Salvador, and he was really hood. He was into the same music as me, but dressed really ghetto and experimented with a lot of mind altering substances. He was actually a little taller than me, and told me that he played all throughout highschool and considered going pro until he had a problem with his knee. I was skeptical but happy to have someone on my team with experience. We made our way over to the gym and started the tournament. There were seven teams, so we had to play a round robin tournament (every team plays against each other one time). It turns out my teammate was no Michael Jordan and he actually only made two baskets the whole tournament!

They play basketball a lot differently here in Chile and I was not used to it, it is much more physical. I was completely exhausted after the first 5 minute game. I thought I was going to pass out! We went into overtime the first game and lost on freethrow shooting. Luckily we won the rest of our games and redeemed ourselves in the championship to take home the gold. It was a lot of fun and once I got a hang of their playing style I was able to play ball. We went back to the school and they had a little award ceremony for the winners/2nd place winners of all the tournaments. We won medals and a really cool Universidad Alberto Hurtado T-shirt.

After the tournament my new hoodrat friends invited me to go out with them for beers (and probably other things) but I was completely exhausted after all those games and they didn't really seem like my type of crowd so I went back home to the apartment, showered, and had a really nice dinner with the family. Dinner is really different here. We ALWAYS have some type of guest over, which is really cool. If you sit down for dinner, you can't expect to get away from the table for at least two hours. There is normally 4 courses for lunch, and 3 for dinner, and then everyone stays and chats for about an hour. I really like it because it helps me practice my Spanish and learn about whats going on. Normally for dinner my family just eats bread, guacamole, ham, and cheese. Sometimes Judith makes me pasta and rice because she knows I can hold my own at the table, but so far I've been really happy with the food.

After dinner I chilled on the computer and called it a night.

besitos!